Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
On March 24, Wynton Marsalis will release his fifth Blue Note recording, He And She, which combines spoken word and music.
He And She is about the relationship between a man and a woman. The album began with words, not music, though it was music that brought forth the words. Marsalis had been listening to Max Roach’s Jazz in ¾ Time, along with pieces by Duke Ellington, like “Lady Mac” from Such Sweet Thunder, work that explored waltz tempo in a jazz context. Roach’s classic album features “Valse Hot,” which, explains Marsalis is “a Sonny Rollins piece, a jazz waltz that I started to play when I was in high school.” That tune set off a spark: “I began to contemplate the shuffle rhythm, that the shuffle rhythm is the combination of a waltz feeling and a march feeling, and I thought it would be good for me to do an album of waltzes. I had written a couple before—one was for a ballet by Twyla Tharp, inspired by the Matisse painting, The Dance. I was thinking about waltzes and how in Vienna today younger people still dance the waltz, a waltz season is still a part of their social calendar. From there, I began to consider the ritual of courtship. The waltz is a courtship dance and at one time it was considered to be risqué. Now, of course, it’s genteel. Then I started to think about men and women, our relationships.”
More info: bluenote.com
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
Jan 21, 2025 7:38 PM
Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
As Ted Nash, left, departs the alto saxophone chair for LCJO, Alexa Tarantino steps in as the band’s first female full-time member.
Mar 4, 2025 1:29 PM
If only because openings for JLCO’s 15 permanent positions appear about as frequently as sub-freezing days on the…
Larry Appelbaum with Wayne Shorter in 2012.
Feb 25, 2025 10:49 AM
Larry Appelbaum, a distinguished audio engineer, jazz journalist, historian and broadcaster, died Feb. 21, 2025, in…
